What an Earl Wants

“I repeat, Jessica. I’m sorry. Tell me—sans the golden rose, would you have made your offer?”

Slowly, silently, she shook her head. “No.”

Once again, he rubbed his hand across his mouth, still looking at her closely. “And you believe it still goes on? The Society.”

Jessica shifted uncomfortably on the cushions. “As of five years ago, yes. I can’t say for certain about now. But you know this.”

“No, Jessica, I don’t,” he said, getting to his feet, suddenly seeming decades older than his years. “I only know that in the past twelve months, four of my late father’s cohorts in that damn Society of his have been murdered. Your father included. I wear the golden rose to signal that I know the hunting accident, the accidental drowning, the fall down the stairs, your father’s coaching accident—they all were in fact murders.”

He had to be spouting nonsense. “I don’t understand. My father was murdered? He and his wife both? How can you know that?”

“Later,” Gideon said, turning toward a small commotion in the hallway. “I believe I’m about to be gifted with the sight of a touching family reunion. Or not,” he added, smiling, as a tall, rail-thin, ridiculously overdressed and harassed-looking youth stomped into the room.

“Now what the bloody blue blazes do you want?” the youth demanded, clutching a large white linen serviette in one hand even as he took a healthy and quite rude bite out of the apple he carried with him. Speaking around the mouthful of fruit, he continued, “First you order me out of bed without a whisper of a reason, then you say I leave the house on penalty of death—as if that signifies, as I might already be dead for all the life you allow me. Then you send me off to stuff my face when Brummell himself swears no sane man breaks his fast before noon, and now you want me in here to—Well, hullo, ain’t you the pretty one.”

“Ad—Adam?” Jessica was on her feet, but none too steadily. This ridiculous popinjay couldn’t be her brother. Adam was sweet and shy, and sat by her side as she read to him, and cried when their father insisted he learn to shoot, and sang with the voice of an angel.

The youth turned to her and gifted her with an elegant leg, marred only when he nearly toppled over as he swept his arm with a mite too much enthusiasm.

“Bacon-brained puppy,” Gideon muttered quietly. “Your brother, Jessica. Behold.”

She beheld. Adam Collier was clad very much in the style of many of the youths who, from time to time, were hastily escorted out of the gaming room as being too raw and young to be out on their own with more than a groat in their pocket, so eager were they to be separated from their purses. Unpowdered hair too long, curled over the iron so that it fell just so onto his forehead, darkened and stiff with pomade. Buckram padding in the shoulders of his wasp-waisted blue coat, a patterned waistcoat that was a jangle of lurid redand-yellow stripes, no less than a half-dozen fobs hanging from gold chains, clocked stockings hugging his toothin shanks. And was that a, dear Lord, it was—he had a star-shaped patch at the corner of his mouth.

“Adam?” she repeated, as if, having said the name often enough, she’d believe what her horrified eyes were telling her. She didn’t want to believe it. Her brother hadn’t grown up, he’d simply gotten taller, slathered his face with paint to hide his spots and turned into an idiot. His only submission to the formalities was the black satin mourning band pinned to his upper arm. And that was edged with black lace. He wasn’t oppressed, he certainly wasn’t heartbroken. He was his brainless twit of a mother, in breeches.

“I fear you have the advantage of me, madam,” Adam drawled with a truly irritating and affected lisp as he approached, clearly intent on kissing her hand. His red heels made his progress somewhat risky, but he managed it, nearly coming to grief only when Brutus ran up to him, intent on sniffing his crotch. “Stupid cur. Do I look like a bitch in heat to you?”

“Don’t blame the dog, you sapskull. You might instead want to rethink the brand of scent you bathe in. As it is, we’re chewing on it,” Gideon said, retiring to the mantel, but not before shooting Jessica an amused look. “Say hello to your half sister.”

Adam stopped, searched among his many chains for a gilt quizzing glass on a stick, and lifted it to his eye. “M’sister? Jessica, was it? No, that’s impossible,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s dead these past half-dozen years or more. Bad fish, something like that. Mama told me most distinctly.” Then his mouth opened in shock, and he pointed the quizzing glass accusingly in her direction. “Imposter! Charlatan! The old reprobate cocks up his toes, and they come out of the woodwork, looking for his blunt. Fie and for shame, woman!”

Gideon rejoined Jessica in front of the sofas. “I’ve been thinking, Mrs. Linden. I may have been unduly hasty in denying your request for guardianship, and even thin-skinned. It must have been the pistol. Perhaps we can reopen negotiations,” he suggested quietly.

At last Jessica regained use of her tongue, which she’d been in some danger of swallowing. “I don’t think so,” she told him, still goggling at the creature in front of her. “You can have him. As to the other, I’ll expect you in Jermyn Street tonight, at eleven.” Then she clapped her hands to her mouth, realizing what she’d said. “The…the other being discussing this business of murders. Not…not you know.”

“What? She’s leaving? I’ve routed her, by God!” Adam clapped his hands in delight. “Yoicks! And away!”

“Oh, stubble it, you nincompoop,” Jessica bit out as she brushed past him.

Gideon’s delighted, infuriating laughter followed after her, all the way down the stairs.

CHAPTER FOUR

“YOU’RE LOOKING HARASSED,” Lord Maximillien commented as he entered the study in Portman Square and perched himself on the corner of his brother’s desk. “At least you’d look harassed if you were anyone else. The Earl of Saltwood is never harassed. He is a—Is there such a word as harasser?”

“What do you want, Max?” Gideon asked, putting down the letter opener he’d been balancing between his fingertips.

“Me? To bid you farewell, I suppose. I leave for Brighton in an hour, on orders from Trixie. There’s some clever barque of frailty she’s befriended, a bit o’muslin with a problem our grandmother thinks might rouse me from my boredom. In any case, she’s been matchmaking. In a weak moment, I agreed to sign on as cohort. It’s my adventurous spirit, you understand.”

Gideon looked at his brother and shook his head in mock dismay. “You even look like an adventurer. Your shirt cuffs are unbuttoned and too long, that cravat’s an insult, those smoked glasses a ridiculous affectation—and I may soon enlist Thorndyke to help hold you down while I scrape all that hair off your face.”

Max bent his head and looked at his brother overtop the blue-smoked rimless glasses he’d discovered a few months earlier in a small shop on Bond Street. “All that hair? A simple mustache, a cunning patch beneath my bottom lip—hardly all that hair.”

Gideon pointed up at him, twirling his finger. “And the rest of it? Looks to be the beginnings of a beard to me. I imagine even a whore with a problem won’t tolerate a fellow who only allows himself to be shaved three times a week.”

Max stabbed his fingers through the heavy thatch of dark brown hair he wore halfheartedly parted in the center of his head, its length covering his ears, the whole waving around his almost aesthetically beautiful face. Only his dark eyes, so like Gideon’s, threw out the warning that this was no pretty fool; perhaps why Max had delighted in finding the smoked glasses. “Allow? I’m not so lazy. I shave myself, brother. Shave myself, dress myself, wash my own rump.”

“And two of those tasks performed in the dark, apparently. Never mind,” Gideon said, not about to admit his brother was one devilishly handsome creature, the sort who could cause small riots among the ladies if he put his mind to it. “What’s the Cyprian’s problem?”

“Other than being ambitious, penniless and of questionable morals? Transport. I’m simply to find a way to get clever girl and ardent swain to Gretna, wed over the anvil and all but publicly bedded so there can be no annulment, all accomplished ahead of any pursuit. You know Trixie. She’s a romantic.”

“She’s a pernicious troublemaker, and that’s in the best of times. Who’s to be the gullible groom—and you’ll notice hearing Trixie has cultivated a whore as bosom chum holds no shock. No, it’s the groom who interests me.”

Max grinned wickedly. “So you see it, too? I did a bit of checking. It’s Wickham’s only grandson. Geoffrey something-or-other. Second in line to the dukedom until his papa, cursed with a spotty liver and still sucking up gin morning till night, sticks his spoon in the wall. Which will probably happen any day now according to Trixie, as they’ve already laid straw outside the man’s door in Grosvenor Square so the invalid isn’t pestered on his sickbed by the noise of traffic, and called in the Autum bawlers for some final-ditch prayer vigil. He should be toes cocked up just in time for the new heir—that would be this Geoffrey fellow—to present his fait accompli bride to his grandfather, shocking the old fellow to the point of apoplexy.”

“Two deaths? That’s ambitious, even for our grandmother. She’s counting on an even pair?”

“Apparently. She’s already had me scribble a wager in the betting book at White’s. A certain interested party offers odds of eight-to-five a certain duke Wdot-dot-dot—as if nobody would know it’s old Wickham—will depart this earthly coil on or before fifteen June of the current year. Lord Alvanley’s holding the stakes.”

“Of course it’s Alvanley. The man’s always in need of funds, and I’m sure Trixie is paying him well. Plus, I think she once had him as a lover. So. Wickham. It took her long enough,” Gideon said, nodding approvingly. “Damn near twenty years. I wouldn’t wager against her, or attempt to stop her. Go with God, Max.”

“I’ll go with most anyone, as well you know. But first—what’s this about twenty years? This isn’t just her usual mischief? What did old Wickham do to set her off?”

Gideon leaned back in his chair, mulling the idea that his brother should be made aware of their grandmother’s motive. After all, Max had already decided Trixie was up to something. “I suppose it’s time you knew. Trixie has always felt she had some…scores to settle. One of them is that, hard on the heels of our family shame, Wickham suggested the Saltwood title and holdings be dissolved and returned to the Crown, due to the scandal. More than suggested. The petition grew legs and damn near got as far as to have an airing in Parliament before it could be squashed. We stood to lose everything.”

“Bastard.”

“He gives bastards a bad name. Self-righteous prig, that’s what he was, casting stones while setting himself up as some holier-than-thou man of impeccable morals. And it wasn’t only him. There were three others heading up the action, until they were shown to be not as moral as they purported themselves to be, and the petition was withdrawn.”

“And Trixie was the one to point this out?”

“I never said that, but you can draw your own conclusions. One was discovered at a house party, in bed with the host’s wife—he died in the inevitable duel. Only weeks later, the second was bankrupted over gaming debts suddenly being called in by the person who’d bought up his vouchers—he shot himself rather than face ruin. And the third was actually imprisoned and barely escaped hanging after it was learned he’d been diddling a family footman, the pot boy and, rumor has it, his own nephew, with or without their agreement. But as I said, all that was years ago.”

“God, I adore that woman, much as she terrifies me,” Max said in some admiration. “Why did she wait so long with Wickham?”

“Probably because she was diddling him. You’ve seen her diamond choker, that ruby bib she sets such store by? They’re only a sampling. She’s been bleeding the fool dry on and off for years. Oh, close your mouth. You know Trixie. She’s a cat with a mouse, playing with it as long as it amuses her, and then, once bored, she pounces. I remember her telling me a few months ago that the man has developed what she termed a disky heart, making him of no further use to her. She’s probably already ordered the gown she’ll don as one of the chief mourners when they wall him up in the family mausoleum.”

“And had the bill sent to Wickham?” Max added, pushing himself up from the desk. “‘Frailty, thy name is woman.’”

“True enough. A true possessor of all the better vices, both moral and spiritual. We lesser mortals can only admire and aspire. But as she has ever pointed out, she isn’t evil. She’d never strike just for the thrill of the thing. All her targets are deserving of her attention in one way or another, at least to her mind.”

And then Gideon frowned.

“What? You’re suddenly back to that same puss that greeted me when I came in here. Is it something to do with Trixie?”

Four men, dead in separate accidents in the past year. All four former members of the secret society founded by Trixie’s son. Twenty years. Some would think that too long to wait for revenge, for some perverted sense of justice. But then how did he explain Wickham?

“No,” Gideon said firmly, not liking his thoughts and definitely unwilling to share them. “Nothing to do with Trixie. I was simply searching my mind for a way to rid myself of that primping, posturing fool I’ve inherited.”